Here’s my sex talk

In the youth ministry world, February is the time to talk about sex and dating. So I thought I’d give you the outline of one of my sex talks (or Download Youth Ministry put their professional flair on it HERE with readymade slides, the complete transcript and small group questions, all for just a few bucks. Those guys rock!)

In this talk I equip young people how to actually save sex in a world that exploits it. In other words, how can I “flee”? (This talk is drawn from chapter 2 in my book to teens, Sex Matters.)

TALK TITLE: What do you mean, “Flee”?

INTRODUCTION: I tell a story of a teenaged boy and his girlfriend going to her house after school. Her parents aren’t home, they go upstairs to her room “to talk”, begin kissing, the laying down… and next thing they know they end up having sex.

The young man goes to his youth pastor and tells him, “We didn’t intend to do it. It just happened. We couldn’t stop! Why?”

The youth pastor wisely responded, “Because you weren’t designed to stop. The truth is, you weren’t supposed to start. Sex is like a train ride. Once the train starts moving, it’s not designed to stop short of its destination. And it definitely can’t slam on the brakes and stop instantaneously.”

SOUND BYTE: Many committed followers of Christ desire to stay sexually pure until marriage. Few know how to keep that commitment.

PASSAGE: This passage is probably one of the most relevant, and yet most ignored advice on how to save sex for marriage.

22 Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. (II Timothy 2:22, NIV)

KEY QUESTION: So what does this “fleeing” look like? The word flee conveys “running away from.” How many of us would describe our actions as “running away from” the sexual temptations we bump into every day?

Let’s identify some of these situations where we commonly set ourselves up for failure.

HOOK:At this point in the talk I give them a peek at much of the misinformation in entertainment media today. I introduce it like this:

“One of the biggest problems is the lack of good information. Who talks about this stuff? Where is a young person supposed to hear specifics on how to save themselves for the person they want to spend the rest of their life with, and commit to that person in marriage? How often do you hear that message? Are any songs or TV shows encouraging young people to actually wait for marriage? Let’s take a quick glimpse at the top of the song charts.”

It’s up to you how many examples you want to show them. I showed them many of the sexually charged lyrics that I mentioned in this blog post about STD’s.

Then I say something like:

“No wonder so many of us are failing in this area. This is part of what makes saving sex so difficult. No one’s talking about saving intimacy for that special someone. Most the messages are just indulge now and don’t think about consequences. So how can we actually save ourselves in such a sexually charged world?”

And I share two disciplines:

1. Be aware what you are soaking in!

Many young people seem to think that they are bulletproof. So here I show them the results of a recent study from some researchers from the University of Central Florida who tackled a project that didn’t win them any favors with the music industry. They sought to examine the relationship between sexual content in music lyrics and music videos, and the sexual behaviors of young people. In other words, “Do the lyrics of my music or the sexy images of the videos I watch actually make me more likely to have sex or engage in risky sexual activities?”

The results weren’t surprising:

“Exposure to music containing sexual content is associated with engagement in risky sexual behaviors.”

Bottom line: The more sexually charged music, the more risky sexual behaviors.

That’s just music. The research about the images we see yields similar results. So…

2. Don’t put yourself in situations where the decision is already made.

Here I encourage them…

“Don’t set yourself up for failure. Or, if you want to save sex until the release date, stop watching the previews! This isn’t just what we watch and listen to; this is the situations we put ourselves in. Like the story I shared just a few moments ago—of the young teenage couple who went up to her bedroom and ended up going much further than they ever wanted to go. Sometimes the bad choices we make began 5 choices ago. Their mistake wasn’t the moment they decided to have sex—their mistake was probably 30 minutes prior when they walked into her house knowing her parents weren’t home.”

Then share this passage:

22 Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. (II Timothy 2:22, NIV)

This verse brings up two good points and I elaborate on each.

Run away!!!

Surround yourself with the “companionship” of other believers who truly want to follow God and his word. This is such a good principle in so many areas in our Christian faith, not just sex. Who is someone you can talk to about sexual temptation… in a world where no one is talking about waiting?

Then break them into small groups to discuss.

I had to share much of this last week in public school assemblies in KS (minus the scripture). I’ll be sharing it again to young people in Chicago in a few weeks.

Keep sharing the truth! The world is sharing plenty of lies.

(If you don’t want to develop this yourself, then DYM has the “ready-made” version of it on their site HERE showing current lyrics from the top of the charts and small group questions.)